News:

The Book of the Diner is well worth preserving. I only wish it had reached a broader audience when it might have mattered more. That is a testament to the blindness of our culture. If there is a future to look back from, one difficult question historians will have to ask is how we let this happen, when so many saw it coming. This site has certainly aggregated enough information and critical thinking to prove that.[/b]

Jorge Zamora-Quezada's plane has been seized by investigators. (Justice Department)

The business of chemotherapy treatment for arthritis has been good to Jorge Zamora-Quezada.

The Texas doctor took to the air on his six-seat Eclipse 500 business jet, bought with some of the $50 million he was paid since 2000 administering a host of treatments to countless patients.

And on land, Zamora-Quezada, 61, roared between various homes and properties in South Texas in his blue 2017 Maserati Granturismo Coupe.

But the Justice Department has alleged that he bankrolled his “lavish” lifestyle by performing unnecessary procedures and prescribing costly medication to, potentially, thousands of patients.

[NIH halts $100 million study of moderate drinking that is funded by alcohol industry]

Investigators have said that he and co-conspirators took part in a $240 million health-care fraud scheme and international money-laundering operation funded by excessive and unwarranted medical procedures — including treatment for children and the elderly.

The seven-count indictment against Zamora-Quezada could land him in prison for decades.

“His patients trusted him and presumed his integrity; in return he allegedly engaged in a scheme of false diagnoses and bogus courses of treatment ... with no regard for patient well-being,” C.J. Porter, a special agent with the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General, said in a Monday statement.

Zamora-Quezada is in custody, and a court date has been set for July 2, Justice Department spokeswoman Nicole Navas Oxman said Thursday.

But various shell organizations were built to obscure the flow of money stemming from excessive and fraudulent treatments, the indictment said.

Zamora-Quezada focused on treating rheumatoid arthritis, the indictment said. The disorder causes the immune system to mistakenly attack tissue and can be treated with various medications and chemotherapy drugs — which involve toxins that can damage healthy cells.

It is unclear how many patients could be affected. The indictment notes more than a dozen people but also notes the doctor stashed thousands of medical records in a dilapidated barn concealed from Medicare oversight.

ProPublica found that he saw more than 1,500 patients in 2015 alone and was paid $1,672 per patient — well above the $955 average in Texas.

A call to a phone number listed under Zamora-Quezada went unanswered, as did one of his Edinburg practice, Arthritis Ost.

Nora Rodriguez, a patient of Zamora-Quezada, told CNN that he yelled and threw her out of his office after she questioned his treatment.

“He kept getting upset when I was asking him why I was feeling worse and not getting better,” she said.

He is also accused of falsifying records to show that his patients were having more pain than they described, and he hid documents from other doctors who saw the same patients for a second opinion. The indictment does not specify who his alleged co-conspirators are or their role in the scheme.

Zamora-Quezada's plane and Maserati have been seized by authorities, along with the various real estate properties that investigators allege he used to rent out, under the appearance of generating legal income.

Properties in Texas, Colorado and California were among those seized, in addition to a pair of penthouses in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Zamora-Quezada is not new to scrutiny.

In 2006, the Texas Medical Board accused him of prescribing a drug “inconsistent with public health and welfare” and of “billing for treatment that was improper, unreasonable, or medically or clinically unnecessary,” the Dallas Morning News reported in 2010.

Zamora-Quezada later settled for a public reprimand, monitoring by other doctors and a $30,000 fine.

He had received $42,450 over a span of a year from Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company, the Dallas Morning News reported, citing ProPublica data. Eli Lilly did not respond to questions on Zamora-Quezada's total revenue from the company or why it paid him.

He was also accused of sexually assaulting four former employees.

A Yellow Pages review of his practice in 2015 is foreboding in retrospect.

“Dr. Zamora has no time for returning patients only for new ones ... be prepared to wait for hours because [they] overbook people like crazy. JUST DON'T GO!!”

Every graduating class has one guy everyone knows is going to be a crook. In my class it was a guy named Larry. I wonder if he's in jail yet.

There's a lot of corruption with Medicaid, especially. Because a lot of data is kept these days, the crooks should stick out like a sore thumb. If 100 identical specialists bill X and Dr. Crook bills 100X, then it's obvious he's gaming the system. But it seems like the pursuit of these people varies. One year they are ignored. Then some newspaper breaks a story that points to corruption. The politicians jump on it and there's an investigation, somebody gets busted. Then it dies down and somebody else does it.

The perfect scam is cataract surgery. It's quick easy and lots of people need it. And Medicare covers it.

But lots of people get billed for it who don't need it. Who decides who who needs it? The guy who does it.

Surgeons only get paid for surgery.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

This is why I avoid most medical treatment and all the diagnostic procedures modern medicine says aging people need. Like colonoscopies. Like the prostate PSA test.

People get older, they start to show up stuff. For surgeons, it's always actionable. Much of it is questionable, in my view.

Only a few guys are like the guy in that story. Out of control, basically. Most guys try to stay within the lines, but that doesn't mean they aren't biased when they diagnose.

The perfect scam is cataract surgery. It's quick easy and lots of people need it. And Medicare covers it.

But lots of people get billed for it who don't need it. Who decides who who needs it? The guy who does it.

Surgeons only get paid for surgery.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

This is why I avoid most medical treatment and all the diagnostic procedures modern medicine says aging people need. Like colonoscopies. Like the prostate PSA test.

A couple of Julys ago, I got lightheaded and got the sweats and took to bed. My wife thought I was having The Big One and nagged me to the local heart hospital. I spent a week there in observation. Turns out I have an arrythmia, some extra beats, which I actually something I was born with. (Back in the day, they called it a "heart murmur." It never stopped me from playing sports or doing anything, at least until late in life.) I had a meeting with a cardiologist, whose recommendation was going in through the femoral artery and snaking a laser into my heart to zap a part of the heart responsible for the errant rhythm.

I thought that a bit much. So I asked if there were anything less, uh, irreversable that he could do. He admitted there were indeed medications that regulated heartbeat that were worth a try.

I've been on Sotalol for over three years now, after getting the dosage right.

Takeaway: When you ask a surgeon what he recommends, don't be surprised if he comes back with surgery.

That said, I wonder why you say what you do about colonosopies and the PSA test. I always thought they were like the 75,000 mile checkup, but you know more about this shit than I do. So I wonder.

Prostate cancer is very slow most of the time. If you have it, the odds are you'll die of something else before it takes you out. My father died from it, after multiple bouts of radiation and multiple surgeries, including an orchidectomy. He lived about five years. If he had never been diagnosed, I doubt he'd have died much sooner. It was actually the failure of his bone marrow to produce red cells that killed him, ultimately. Was that from cancer, or from radiation?

The answer is nobody knows. It's unknowable.

I'm not necessarily rational about all my decisions. I'm more of a Joe Bageant type. Let me die with dignity and not exhaust my family and my modest estate pursuing immortality.

How many heart transplants did David Rockefeller get? Seven, I think. And then he died. Such vanity.